Opinion: Country Music’s Banner Year is a Rejection of the Modern World
Despite Billy Ray Cyrus’s best efforts on inauguration day, this year was a year of country music. As seen at this weekend’s Grammys, country music has taken over the mainstream. After taking note of the meteoric rise of neotraditional, big-chinned artists like Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan, everybody and their desperately-trying-to-pull-off-a-cowboy-hat mother has been hopping onto the country bandwagon. Post Malone, Yung Gravy, and many more random white men have embraced the power of forced Southern twang and a little bit of banjo. Even the queen mother Lana Del Rey claims to be cooking up a little Nashville-flavored something. The real question is, why have we, the profit-generating masses, gotten so into country music lately? Why are we so eager to stomp our boots and shake our denim-clad behinds to a genre that was a cultural laughing stock just 10 years ago? When you truly interrogate the state of our nation the reason is clear. Our western-tinted Spotify Wrappeds reflect a communal rejection of modernity.
No matter who you ask we can all agree, the world has gone to shit. Somehow the economy is always bad, the planet is warming yet my toes are still cold, and the emails never stop coming in. Global capitalism and its overdependence on technology have stunted our social and emotional lives. And obviously, a good bit of country livin’ is the cure.
We yearn for the feeling of a community that resides across the street, not in the vast ether of the internet. Everybody’s getting a little bit sick of all this SpaceX, AI, modernist bullshit. Stop inventing things! Collectively, we’ve all come to the same conclusion: we want out. Whether or not you’d ever say it out loud, you pine to drive a truck down a bumpy dirt track, the freedom of the road and the majesty of the mountains stretching out before you, calling you home. You watched Yellowstone. You know it to be true.
Do you know who else knows it to be true? Beyonce. Despite common sense, Beyonce is just like us (only more talented and better and with the face and voice of a divine being). She too is sick of her stupid little phone with its constant cries of “bzzzt” and “ping” and “mm mmmmm.” So she chucked that accursed rectangle into the bayou, peered into our souls, and delivered unto us “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM.” And boy oh boy, are we holding 'em. We are holding 'em good and tight. And by “em” I, of course, mean the essential facets of human nature that are fundamentally incompatible with the world we have built for ourselves.
We evolved to socialize within groups of 150 people. We are meant to build strong social bonds with people we’ve known since birth. We are meant to share food, look after one another’s children, and maintain a firm grasp on the meaning of the word “home.” We have strayed far from this life. Instead of making music together as humankind once did, we put in our AirPods to block the outside world as we push through anonymous crowds in Red Square, expressionless (unless of course, someone eats shit on those godforsaken bricks).
On some level we have all realized that this is not how we want to live. We are moving out of the big cities. We are talking about local food systems. We are forming book clubs with our friends and trying desperately to stick with them. We are listening to Shaboozey. Gone are the days of Pitbull and freaking out over the newest iPhone. We fantasize about pulling on our boots and escaping the breakneck pace of modern life to the sweet sounds of Jelly Roll. It may be true that our screen time still exceeds seven hours, but we really wish it didn’t. The world is still confusing and scary, but the small-town feeling we get when that plucky guitar comes on can always be relied on for a few minutes of relief.
What musical phenomenon will lay claim to the years to come? Who knows. Probably Doechii.